


In the Mouth of a Graveyard

by Imadeamistake



Category: Blade Runner (Movies), Blade Runner 2049
Genre: Gen, Post-Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 22:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imadeamistake/pseuds/Imadeamistake
Summary: Above KD6-3.7 a new day dawned and his frozen body began to thaw.





	In the Mouth of a Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic with K on the steps, I know lots have people have written this already but I wanted to write it too.

Above KD6-3.7 a new day dawned and his frozen body began to thaw.

It was difficult to identify an emotion when one came along. For the last few hours, everything had been hidden under a haze of mild disappointment. His body felt heavy under its blanket of snow but that’s not an emotion. He’d been lying here all night.

He pulled on the disappointment like a loose thread. Nothing more unraveled. He wondered when Deckard would come out of the building, or if he ever would. He didn't mind either way really. If Deckard came out and helped him that would be alright, and if Deckard never came out that would be fine too. If Deckard came out and left him, taking his new daughter and vanishing into the morning. That wouldn't be fine. 

And Deckard would have to come out eventually. It was universal law that must be obeyed. Matter cannot disappear, what goes in must come out. Deckard wouldn’t be in there forever. He would come out and take K, or leave him. 

The sun was a ball of molten steel, oozing light over the sky. K could feel it melting the top layer of ice paved over his skin. That wasn’t an emotion either but it was what K could feel.

He thought about what Deckard and his daughter would do next. Going off world wasn’t impossible, but it depended on connections and as Dr Stelline spent the last twenty years in a bubble, K would have guessed she wasn’t that well connected.  Staying on earth, it was possible to hide. Maybe Deckard would take her back to Nevada, to fill the desolate halls of a palace built for a thousand people.

He licked his lips, it was the first movement he had made in hours. He was thirsty and licking up the snow felt nice even though he knew it was full of toxins. Feeling thirsty isn't an emotion but it was a feeling. If emotion is something that leads you to an irrational action; like saving Deckard for instance, then maybe thirst was an emotion, because licking up poison rainwater was certainly irrational.

Animals feel thirsty, trees drink water when it falls whether it's clean or not. Maybe this was just like that, and eventually he would die too, like they did just from drinking the water. If he didn’t die from the wound of course. But the realization was hitting K that the wound wasn’t going to be enough. Not enough to do it quickly at least. There’s a limit to how long you can wait to die before giving up on the idea and K was starting to give up.

The sun was truly risen by then. Where before he was trapped in the ice and darkness he now had a choice. Get up and leave, or stay and wait. 

He thought again of Deckard and his daughter. He imagined them walking past him on their way to escape.

He tried to lift his arm but it was difficult. Bracing himself with his legs he could move his abdomen an inch or so. He struggled back and forth in the snow. The movement and the sun slowly lifted him up. He fought to get one leg underneath him. If he could push hard it might be enough to pry him off the stone floor. His body was frozen stiff but the exertion thawed him faster. He kept on trying. 

It was a good sign that he was left alone all night. It meant he and Deckard weren't followed. He bent his knee up into a right angle and twisted up as much as he could away from the stone. 

He couldn't feel his fingers but he could bend his neck just far enough to see his right hand where it was stuck to the paving stone. His left hand fell across his body and by rolling back and forth a little he freed it. He stretched it up to the sun as high as he could, trying to get closer to the reviving warmth. His fingers opened like a flower as if he could hold the light in his palm. 

He stayed like that and caught his breath until the ice dripped off him, and the fingers of his right hand slipped in the wetness. He sat up and then remembered the stab wound in his gut. The blood was still frozen where it ebbed out of his organs overnight. He could see its trail down the steps only partially covered by snow.

His legs were stiff but when he grappled up the side of the staircase they just about supported him. The wind was getting up but there were no trees to blow in it. He remembered living trees, but the memory couldn’t be true. So many things in his mind were untrustworthy. Thinking anything was like crossing stones above a thundering river, at any time one could slip and throw him into the deep waters. 

The wind brought no leaves to the steps of the memory building, but it did bring a collection of plastic, light enough to be caught up in its gusts. He kicked out a foot and scattered it again into the air and that’s when he saw the feather.

He bent down, breathing hard with the effort and the pain of moving his stomach. He had a memory of holding one before, in a state park somewhere when he was a child. But that feather and that park and even that child didn't ever exist. They came from the building behind him, every one of them. Along with the trees and the animals in his mind, the friends and conversations.

This was the first time he held a feather. This was real.

The sun was covered by mist now. The daylight had exposed the buildings around him. They rose like monoliths into the sky, cutting into the dull light. There was a ground road leading away from the memory building. After that all directions were the same. He stood surrounded by dark concrete on every side, and he knew that the concrete and steel and stone stretched out forever, leaving nothing alive underneath it. 

He ran his fingers over the feather and walked to where the wind came from. 


End file.
